Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Monday, May 12, 2014

Mix tapes may be a thing of the past, but the last dying art of musical romance isn't the cassette, it's the Mix CD. Most cars still have CD players. Sure an ipod mix might serve the same purpose over a greater number of songs, but CD mixes are a nice way to show your love in 74 minutes or less. Here are some I made for my girlfriend Sam over the last few months. I'm posting them here today in honor of her passing her defense and becoming a DOCTOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTRY at UCLA!!! Most of the music listed below is available online at the usual places, but Amazon Instant Download and the original artist's sites are the best ways to get them. Support music by buying some of these songs if you like em!

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Some recent Doctor Strange collectible non-sports cards were released in extremely limited editions and I was wondering if there was some way to mathematically calculate the odds of collecting the following:

Above is a photo of 20 cards featuring all 4 of the 2013 Marvel Fleer Retro Precious Gem Doctor Strange cards (top row), the Rittenhouse Marvel 75th Anniversary Dr. Strange card (top row far right), as well as every form of the three Doctor Strange cards and one Dormammu card from the 2014 Rittenhouse Marvel Universe set (these are seen in the 4 rows below).

Of these 20...

There were only 10 made of 4 of them. (The Fleer Green Precious Gem (top row, second card from right) and the 3 Rittenhouse Diamond Parallel cards. You can see these on the far right on rows 2 - 4.

There were only 50 made of 4 of them. (The Fleer Blue Precious Gem and the 3 Rittenhouse Ruby Parallel cards)

There were only 75 made of 1 of them. (The Rittenhouse 75th Anniversary card seen on the far right in the first row)

There were only 100 made of 4 of them. (The Fleer Red Precious Gem and the 3 Rittenhouse Emerald Parallel cards)

The rest of the 7 cards are commons. The Rittenhouse set has a gold base set along with a blue "Sapphire Parallel" base set, so that makes 6 total in that run. The common one from the Marvel Fleer Retro set is top row left.

These cards are distributed to a few hundred stores and private collections around the world.

How do I calculate the odds of having been able to find them all?

To determine the odds you would need to determine the probability first, which would require knowing a few vital pieces of information:

1. Approximately how many people collect these things? This would be the variable that determines the demand.
2. How many cases of each card set were made in total? This would determine total supply.
3. How many of each card are currently available on eBay (or elsewhere online)? This would determine the variable of 99% certainty that you could currently obtain an item if you had enough money.
4. The probability that the rare items are still available in unopened packages and have not all already been accounted for.

Once you have these figures (or an educated guess for each) you can use a mathematical formula to work out the probability and determine the odds of all of them ever coming together as they have in the picture above.